Packs an archive. It is the opposite of unarchive. By default, it assumes the compression source exists on the target. It will not copy the source file from the local system to the target before archiving. Source files can be deleted after archival by specifying remove=True.

Attributes the file or directory should have. To get supported flags look at the man page for chattr on the target system. This string should contain the attributes in the same order as the one displayed by lsattr.

aliases: attr

dest

The file name of the destination archive. This is required when path refers to multiple files by either specifying a glob, a directory or multiple paths in a list.

exclude_path

(added in 2.4)

Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to exclude from the archive

format

Choices:

bz2

gz ←

tar

xz

zip

The type of compression to use.

Support for xz was added in version 2.5.

group

Name of the group that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.

mode

Mode the file or directory should be. For those used to /usr/bin/chmod remember that modes are actually octal numbers. You must either specify the leading zero so that Ansible's YAML parser knows it is an octal number (like 0644 or 01777) or quote it (like '644' or '0644' so Ansible receives a string and can do its own conversion from string into number. Giving Ansible a number without following one of these rules will end up with a decimal number which will have unexpected results. As of version 1.8, the mode may be specified as a symbolic mode (for example, u+rwx or u=rw,g=r,o=r).

owner

Name of the user that should own the file/directory, as would be fed to chown.

path

required

Remote absolute path, glob, or list of paths or globs for the file or files to compress or archive.

remove

bool

Choices:

no ←

yes

Remove any added source files and trees after adding to archive.

selevel

Default:

s0

Level part of the SELinux file context. This is the MLS/MCS attribute, sometimes known as the range. _default feature works as for seuser.

serole

Role part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.

setype

Type part of SELinux file context, _default feature works as for seuser.

seuser

User part of SELinux file context. Will default to system policy, if applicable. If set to _default, it will use the user portion of the policy if available.

unsafe_writes

bool

(added in 2.2)

Choices:

no ←

yes

Normally this module uses atomic operations to prevent data corruption or inconsistent reads from the target files, sometimes systems are configured or just broken in ways that prevent this. One example are docker mounted files, they cannot be updated atomically and can only be done in an unsafe manner.

This boolean option allows ansible to fall back to unsafe methods of updating files for those cases in which you do not have any other choice. Be aware that this is subject to race conditions and can lead to data corruption.

-name:Compress directory /path/to/foo/ into /path/to/foo.tgzarchive:path:/path/to/foodest:/path/to/foo.tgz-name:Compress regular file /path/to/foo into /path/to/foo.gz and remove itarchive:path:/path/to/fooremove:yes-name:Create a zip archive of /path/to/fooarchive:path:/path/to/fooformat:zip-name:Create a bz2 archive of multiple files, rooted at /patharchive:path:-/path/to/foo-/path/wong/foodest:/path/file.tar.bz2format:bz2-name:Create a bz2 archive of a globbed path, while excluding specific dirnamesarchive:path:-/path/to/foo/*dest:/path/file.tar.bz2exclude_path:-/path/to/foo/bar-/path/to/foo/bazformat:bz2-name:Create a bz2 archive of a globbed path, while excluding a glob of dirnamesarchive:path:-/path/to/foo/*dest:/path/file.tar.bz2exclude_path:-/path/to/foo/ba*format:bz2

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key

Returned

Description

archived

list

success

Any files that were compressed or added to the archive.

arcroot

string

always

The archive root.

expanded_exclude_paths

list

always

The list of matching exclude paths from the exclude_path argument.

expanded_paths

list

always

The list of matching paths from paths argument.

missing

list

success

Any files that were missing from the source.

state

string

always

The current state of the archived file. If 'absent', then no source files were found and the archive does not exist. If 'compress', then the file source file is in the compressed state. If 'archive', then the source file or paths are currently archived. If 'incomplete', then an archive was created, but not all source paths were found.